Why does the visible light spectrum combine to make white instead of black like the color wheel in art class?

Question

Aren’t they both just visible light hitting our eyes??

In: 0

Answer 1

“white” light is all the colors combined, everything you see is reflecting light but absorbing all other colors. You can think of it like white light is a positive of every color and say a car tire is a negative of every color (not truly a complete negative, closest thing we have to that is a coating called vanta black). So the tire cancels out light and all you see is black (or an abscess of light).